Official Website

Platform: PSP, PlayStation

Genre: RPG

Number of Players: 1

Square-Enix has always made role-playing games that have not only become huge hits with fans, their eventual rarity in some cases has made them much sought after collector’s item. I’m not the only one guilty of paying far more for a game than what I should have, the $80 I paid for Final Fantasy Tactics was shattered when the game was released two months later as a greatest hit, but I suppose in the end, it was money well spent. Valkyrie Profile is another title that fans have clamored to get their hands on and the game has commanded some steep prices on eBay as well as other online auction sites.

I was never a huge fan of the game though, but when I found that Valkyrie Profile was coming to the PSP, this time with the Lenneth name attached to it, I thought that maybe I’d give the game another shot. However, if I had known that it was just the same game with added CG, I would have skipped it all together.

Based on the name alone, you probably have determined that Valkyrie Profile uses the Norse mythology as its character template, and that’s very true. You are a Valkyrie named Lenneth, and you have an important role to undertake for all of Valhalla. Ragnarok (the end of the world) is quickly approaching and you have been selected to bring the souls of fallen warriors to the god in preparation. It is your duty to not only find these souls, but to train them for the impending war.

Valkyrie Profile isn’t quite like many of the other RPG’s that fans of Square-Enix might be used to playing, and in particular the battle system is quite a bit different. In the overworld or dungeon view, you will see the monsters, thus allow you to strike them with your sword or even freeze them to avoid combat all together. Hitting the enemies will allow your party the chance to strike first. While combat is turned based, you’ll find that the formation of your characters corresponds to the buttons on the PSP. For example, pressing X will let that corresponding character attack and you can begin to string the characters skills together to form a combo. This can cause a tremendous amount of damage, assuming it’s done correctly of course, and can make short work of difficult enemies. Stringing together enough hits will eventually yield an even flashier onscreen move, though trust me, it looks good at first, but is tiring after seeing it for the 50th time or so.

The dungeons are a bit more unique and instead of being the classic style, are played a bit more like a classic platform game. Assemble together a group of characters, or Einherjar, along with Valkyrie (you’re supposed to train these poor souls after all) and as you navigate through the treacherous depths, you’ll be required to do battle with terrible monsters and even perform some rather interesting jumps (though a bit difficult in some areas.) Valkyrie will not only create blocks of ice to help her along the way, she can life, throw, and shatter ice (and other items) in an effort to help the fallen warriors improve their skills.

Unlike many RPG’s however, money, shops, and things of this nature actually aren’t in the cards. Instead, you will receive Materialization points that can be used to create spiritual items. You can later take these same items and transmute them into new gear for your party. In some ways, it’s almost like a precursor to what has been seen in Square-Enix’s Dragon Quest VIII, but on a much more simplified scale (and there’s no need to really run around waiting for an item to be completed like in DQ.) Another nice asset is the experience orb which can be used to level up characters without really doing anything at all. It beats the heck out of going through fight after fight to go up a level or two.

What I never cared for with Valkyrie Profile is that many of the introductions to the characters are simply far too long. I’ll all for a good story in an RPG, but VP tends to spend too much time on back story and the tragic events that have sent the characters to the afterworld. The game also has some horrendous dubbing and makes that sequences grating and annoying. While you might think that these can be skipped, that’s where your wrong. I tried I could feasibly think of to bypass them, but VP doesn’t even offer the option to pause these story elements let alone move on to the next phase of the game.

The “improvement” for the game is simply that Square-Enix has gone in and added computer animated cut-scenes, something that wasn’t featured in the game before, but nothing else has really changed at all. This isn’t the first time that the company has decided to use this technique and the Final Fantasy Anthology for example, which featured FF V and VI, only had CG thrown in, otherwise the games were the same. Honestly, I don’t feel that CG is a reason to re-release a game, though it’s going to make those that have been trying to grab a copy of the original pleased. If the game were remade, I might find a reason to rejoice, but this merely feels like a half hearted endeavor to say the least. I suppose that maybe next we might find Chocobo’s Dungeon make its way to the PSP with new CG or perhaps even Bushido Blade Remix with a new character. Though . . . a re-release of Star Ocean: The Second Story wouldn’t be something that I’d be opposed to.

At the time, Valkyrie Profile really looked fantastic, much better than the one Square title that everyone else (except me) thinks is the greatest game ever made; Final Fantasy VII. The graphics still hold up rather well, but they aren’t nearly as good as what has been seen with other PSP titles, though for the time the game was released, there is a fair amount of detail for when the game was released, but it doesn’t hold up to some other RPG’s on the PSP like Untold Legends and such. Valkyrie Profile also uses another aspect that was seen in some of the companies RPG titles, and that would be using a character profile image instead of bland on-screen text, so there’s a good anime quality in some portions. However, if there were any cosmetic touch ups, I failed to notice them.

Valkyrie Profile I didn’t find to be impressive upon its initial release, and Lenneth simply left me feeling cheated. While part of me still wishes that Square-Enix would let us “back in the fold” so to speak, I don’t feel that even a review copy would have made me feel any better about the game. If you’ve been fighting online however to get an original PS1 copy, now is the time to at least get the game in a portable form since everything that you may have enjoyed about it is all right here, but other than that, not only is this simply a cheap rehash, it’s an outdated RPG that doesn’t nearly stand up as well as some of the newer titles that are available.
 

-mike-